Daily Sitka Sentinel

Assembly Undecided On Picking City Executive

By BRIELLE SCHAEFFER 

Sentinel Staff Writer

After interviews with the final three candidates for city administrator Wednesday, the Sitka Assembly was not ready to make a decision – and may even go back to the drawing board.

The three candidates under consideration are Homer public works director Carey Meyer, Sitka electric department director Bryan Bertacchi and Sitka Fire Department chief Dave Miller.

In their discussion following the Skype interviews, Assembly members talked about reopening the application process or using a hiring agency.

“From these interviews no one really jumped out and said to me, ‘yes’,” Assembly member Tristan Guevin said. “I would be comfortable with one of these three candidates but I’d like to have a little bit wider selection when I make my final decision.”

The Assembly quizzed the candidates on everything from the local hospitals merger to management styles to budget cuts in the three 45-minute interviews conducted over the internet.

The Assembly also asked Bertacchi about his Fish and Game violation for making a false statement about his residency in his application for a fishing license last year.

“How do we justify that as a city administrator?” Assembly member Bob Potruzski asked.

Bertacchi said the citation was a minor offense, the equivalent of a traffic ticket. 

“When I volunteered to be chairmen of the hospital board and in the electric department I learned very quickly when you make hard decisions people attack you personally,” he said. 

Bertacchi said he bought a boat in January 2016 and bought a fishing license at the same time.

“Anybody who knows me knows I don’t fish,” he said. “I should have waited to buy it when I needed it.”

Before the meeting was adjourned Helen Craig, a member of the public, came forward to speak against hiring Bertacchi as administrator.

“I don’t trust him,” she said. “I don’t think he would be good for Sitka. “If he can lie about a small thing like the residency how can you trust him about the big stuff.”

The Assembly decided to discuss the next step – whether to narrow down the candidates further or open up the listing again – at their regular meeting next Tuesday.

Bryan Bertacchi

Bertacchi, who has a background in municipal and private energy management, told the Assembly he could do both his current job and that of city administrator. 

“I know what I am capable of doing and what I am not capable of doing,” he said. 

The combined role would also save the city money during difficult budget times, Bertacchi said, and give other municipal workers more training and opportunity to step up and fill in. 

He was also asked about his plans for the future and whether he intends to stay in Sitka. He has been the utility director since August 2015. 

“I don’t see myself leaving until you guys ask me to leave,” Bertacchi responded. 

He said he would have no problem managing Sitka’s $27 million budget.

“I have managed budgets bigger than this,” he said. 

To address the budget issues, he said the city has to take a conservative approach. 

“I think in all these buckets of problems that we’re dealing with we need to start thinking about austerity in every single one of them and how to make that work,” he said. 

Bertacchi said the city could look into its insurance for the Blue Lake Dam as well as its land holdings as ways to save and make some money. 

“I think there are some hidden gold nuggets,” he said.

Bertacchi also said Sitka could duplicate a program he saw in California’s Bay Area to train young workers for local industries. The program could bring in more business by supplying skilled labor, he said. 

“I do think there are plenty of opportunities to do things,” he said. 

Dave Miller

Miller said he has worked for the City of Sitka for 21 of the 28 years he has lived here. He has a background in food service and the hotel industry and initially worked for Sheldon Jackson College.

That varied experience has given him his own management style, he told the Assembly.

“I am delegator in some ways and a worker in other ways,” he said. “If problems happen I am the type of guy who wants to know what the problem is. We’ll figure out why it happens and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“My goal as administrator is to make it work.”

“I’m a  talker,” he said. “Get me eye-to-eye and we’ll figure something out.”

The key to Sitka’s budget woes is going to be creating more revenue from areas such as tourism, he said.

“I don’t know why we can’t have a conference here every other week,” he said. “People love Sitka. ... We need to figure out how we can get more money in Sitka and I think we can do that very easily.”

As for the hospital merger question, Miller said he believes Sitka Community and Mt. Edgecumbe hospitals should remain separate. 

“The people in the community want two hospitals,” he said. “They are ingrained in the community hospital, they want that two hospital system. We have to listen to what the community has to say.”

His experience as fire chief has also made him qualified to tackle many jobs at once, he told the Assembly. For example, during the August 2015 landslides, emergency responders received a record number of other calls but they were still able to provide service at the usual level, he said. 

Since he would be exposed to more contention as administrator than he is as fire chief, he was asked how he would deal with conflict. 

“I think the people would like someone they know and that they can talk to,” Miller said.

He said he wanted to apply for the job to try something different, he said. 

“We work for the people of this city,” he said. “That’s who I work for. They pay my paycheck. I can’t do everything that they want but I plan on giving it a shot.”

Carey Meyer

Meyer has a varied background as an engineer in public and private sectors but has spent the last 16 years as the city engineer and public works director of Homer.

He admitted that he doesn’t know all the details about Sitka’s budget problems, but has experience dealing with the same kind of issues in Homer.

“I’m not going to sit here tonight and pretend I understand all the ins and outs there in Sitka,” he said. But, he added, perhaps Sitka could use some strategies that Homer has been employing to close its $1 million budget gap, such as directing money from different funds, reevaluating priorities and finding new revenue from increased tourism.

He cited his experience as an engineer as being a good fit for the job. 

“The main focus of a public manager is to educate and inform and to look at the problems on the table and do what engineers do a lot: define what the alternatives are,” he said. 

Assembly member Aaron Swanson asked Meyer how he would deal with residents who oppose utility rate hikes. 

“You have to make every effort to reduce the cost with running the utility, but at the same time you have to make people realize utilities are necessary and it’s never any fun to raise rates,” he said. 

He said he uses the “management by walking around” style. 

“Obviously in the first year or so I’d want to get to know everybody in the community and get to know city employees to provide the resources they need to continue doing their job at the highest level,” Meyer said. “We have one mouth and two ears. We ought to listen just as much as we talk.”

He said he currently manages half of Homer’s budget and imagines he’ll have no problem figuring out Sitka’s financial systems. 

Asked why he wants to leave his current job, Meyer said he’s ready for a change and is interested in municipal management. 

“I have spent a lot of time trying to understand how cities run well,” he said, adding he received a master’s of public administration from UAS Juneau.